


we're just getting started, don't you tiptoe

by driedupwishes



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Confessions, First Kiss, M/M, Riku is Scared and Gay, and Sad and Pining, that means we're free of Disney, the kiss is a spoiler technically but oh well y'all will live
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2016-06-13
Packaged: 2018-07-14 18:47:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7185749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/driedupwishes/pseuds/driedupwishes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Riku,” Sora says and there’s something in his voice that halts Riku’s words, locks them in his throat as it suddenly becomes hard to swallow. Sora looks away, thick lashes falling to hide blue irises, and Riku feels his heart lurch at the expression, tentative and small, which clings to the corners of Sora’s lips as he tugs on them with his teeth. </p><p>“Are you in love with me?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	we're just getting started, don't you tiptoe

“So,” Sora says, dropping into Riku’s corner of shade on the beach, landing in a heap of sweat and salt-kissed skin against the bare skin of Riku’s shoulder. A lifetime of living on the beach’s edge, mixed with a lifetime of being Sora’s friend makes it easy not to react his abrupt appearance, though something still clenches uncomfortably in Riku’s chest when Sora waits for him to close his book before he continues speaking.

“So,” Riku echoes, closing his book, finger tucked in the pages to mark his place. He hopes this won’t take long, but something glitters in Sora’s eyes and tells him he’s in for one of Sora’s Wild Rides.

“I’m an idiot,” Sora continues promptly. The frown that pulls at Riku’s lips is just as prompt.

“You’re not an idiot,” he says, the words bordering on a snap. The bark of the palm tree he’s tucked beneath digs into his shoulder as he shifts, the sharp points of the bark piercing his skin through his tank top. Sora snorts, hair tickling Riku’s throat as he shakes his head.

“Who told you that,” Riku interrupts, before Sora can list whatever reasons he had for this declaration. Riku wishes the list of people who’d claim such a thing of the shorter boy was, well, smaller, but it isn’t, and he runs through it in his head as he waits for Sora to answer. Sora sighs, probably debating the merits of trying to continue this conversation without telling, and then shrugs.

“Roxas,” the brown haired boy says eventually, quietly. “But he had a really good reason to, this time.”

Riku twists to narrow his eyes at Sora, who smiles back wryly, leaning a little more firmly against Riku’s shoulder as he does so.

“You’re not an idiot,” Riku argues. “You’re cousin’s a prick, you know-“

“Riku,” Sora says and there’s something in his voice that halts Riku’s words, locks them in his throat as it suddenly becomes hard to swallow. Sora looks away, thick lashes falling to hide blue irises, and Riku feels his heart lurch at the expression, tentative and small, which clings to the corners of Sora’s lips as he tugs on them with his teeth.

“Are you in love with me?”

 _Well fuck_ , Riku thinks, in the moment that holds after that question is asked. He turns his head from Sora, blinking at the sand at their feet, where the shade of the palm trees end. Waves lap against the shore, seagulls cry above, and Riku finds himself swallowing, and then clearing his throat, and then swallowing again, because he can’t answer, can’t break this moment, because he knew it was coming but he hoped it for another year, maybe two, before he had to-

“Riku,” Sora says, gently. Fingers as gentle as his voice curl around Riku’s jaw, directing his head back until he’s locked and drowning in blue eyes. Riku swallows, something sharp in his throat tearing his voice apart.

He thinks, a little hysterically, those sharp things might be the edges of his broken heart. That sounds nicely dramatic, he decides, for the moment which will surely be the last meaningful moment in his life.

Sora frowns at him, impatient, a little, though Riku knows he is trying. Sora, he knows, has never liked to see anyone suffer. However, he also knows Sora has blindspots, has points he can’t simply wrap his mind around and understand, and so the idea that Riku has been suffering, quietly and unnoticed, is eating away at what patience the brown haired boy is trying to call up.

 _I love him_ , Riku thinks, his fondness barbed so that it claws apart his lungs and steals his breath. Something burns in the corners of his eyes and he knows they are tears, but he also knows they cannot fall. Sora will feel terrible, if Riku cries now.

Sora will feel terrible, no matter how this ends. But Riku has done everything he could, to minimize the damage of this eventual moment, and so he sighs, and clears his throat one last time, and speaks.

“Yes,” he says simply. And then, because he cannot help it, adds, “I’m sorry.”

Shock ripples across Sora’s face, chased by a blush, and suddenly he’s not leaning on Riku’s shoulder any more. Riku knew this would happen, but the absence of the other boy’s familiar weight against his shoulder is crippling, like a blow to the chest. He winces and then swallows that feeling, pushes it down and curls his hands together around his book to keep from reaching out and begging for Sora’s forgiveness.

“You- I-“ Sora swallows, chews through something and then finally spits out, “I thought Roxas was lying.”

“Your cousin talks too much,” Riku finds himself saying, though the words lack heat. He should be mad, and he will be later, probably, but for now there’s just- nothing. A smile Riku doesn’t feel pulls at his lips through a force a will that’s kept this secret hidden for nearly five years. “I guess he’s picked that up from his boyfriend though.”

“Riku,” Sora says, but Riku turns his head, not able to look at the deepest frown he’s ever seen Sora make. In the corner of his vision a hand reaches out and then retracts, as if scared to touch him. Riku swallows and watches the waves roll in.

“I’m sorry,” Riku says again, “but it’s not a lie. I am-“

The words stick in his throat. On the days wherein he couldn’t help himself, he had daydreamed that this confession would leave his lips with the grace of a blessing, that it would be received with a gasp of delighted surprise and a cry of his name that would rise, ringing, up to the very stars themselves.

But now, the confession won’t fall at all. He can damn himself, but he can’t taint what he feels by spitting it out to sit in the sand at Sora’s side. Something bubbles like hysteria in his chest and his eyes burn, blurring everything together in the bright sunlight of the summer day.

“I am,” he says finally, throat tight, the words hushed. “I didn’t mean to be, but I am. I understand, if you’re mad.”

Silence hangs between them, such a physical thing Riku feels it slip around his neck, half imagined lover’s caress, half noose. He blinks and the tears that he won’t let fall get caught in his lashes. So much for not looking too miserable, he thinks, and sighs.

And then he jerks as hands cup his cheeks, the touch soft but insistent as those hands, calloused and so familiar, guide his head up once more.

“Riku,” Sora says, and he’s determined, there’s a furrow in his eyebrows and a purse to his lips that shatters something in Riku’s chest. He tries to pull back, but Sora holds him steady, a thumb swiping under his eye. Riku flinches and a tear slips out; he can feel it catch against Sora’s rough thumb, can feel it in the ricochet reaction that happens across Sora’s face, the boy paling under his constant darkened tan from the sun.

“Oh Riku,” Sora repeats, his determination sliding into something that aches physically to look at, it’s so soft, like his voice. “This is why I’m an idiot, I- I didn’t know. I _didn’t know_. I’m _so_ sorry, Riku, _so_ -“

“Don’t,” Riku snaps. He flinches so hard he rips himself from Sora’s hands, the back of his head knocking against the palm tree behind him. His book drops from numb hands and distantly he thinks of sand between its pages, gritty and impossible to be free of.

Sand, he has always thought, is a lot like love. You can shower as many times as you like, but the feeling of it clings to your skin, digs under your nails, and refuses to leave. Try as he might, he could never scrub the prickle of it away.

“Don’t- _don’t apologize_. You don’t have to be sorry, I fucked up, it’s my _fault-_ “

“Your- _Riku_ -“

There’s an angry breath, expelled from lips Riku knows the shape of, has dreamed of the feel of, and he can’t look, can’t sit still any longer. He scrambles up, head hung low, and he feels in the shift of the sand as Sora follows him. There’s sputtering, hands grabbing at his arm, but the sledgehammer of his heart against his ribs is breaking him apart, is taking the cracks from years of _wanting_ and it _hurts_.

It hurts so much in a way he hadn’t prepared for. When Sora finally fists his hand in Riku’s shirt and pulls him just short of the line of shade on the beach, he can’t even fight the pull. His head turns, chin tucked low, and he finds blue eyes burning, beautifully so.

“Will you let me _talk_ ,” Sora snaps, or tries to. There’s more pout in his voice than anger, jaw jutted out, the way he always had as a child when denied extra dessert. Riku sighs, reaching up to rub at his cheeks and the tear track there with his wrist, but nods. Sora nods as well, bangs bouncing across his forehead, and Riku loves him.

Even now, seconds before the end, Riku loves him so much, it feels like an eclipse, his sense blotted out as the world is thrown into darkness.

“Roxas told me,” Sora repeats. Riku knows this pattern; Sora finds it easier to understand things when he can explain them out-loud, taking everyone else on the journey with him. Usually this quirk is enchanting. At the moment it is suffocating, but Riku stays still. “He told me you- you loved me. I didn’t believe him, but he had, like, _evidence_. He had this whole speech, pointed out a lot of things that, y’know, made more sense, as he talked, and then he told me I was a fucking idiot and that if I didn’t believe him, I could just go _ask you_ , so-“

Sora stops. That small expression crawls across his face once more and Riku’s chest constricts at the sight. He opens his mouth to finish the story, to say _so you came to ask me_ , but Sora scowls at him and so Riku closes his mouth, and waits.

“So, I- I came out here to ask you. Because I, um. Riku, I-“

The breath Sora blows back has so much force to it, his bangs fly up and fall crooked. Riku’s fingers itch to brush them aside. It’s a familiar feeling. In a familiar way, Riku shoves it down and buries it inside his chest. Seconds pass in silence, Sora’s face twisting upon itself the longer it holds between them, and Riku waits.

“I love you,” Sora blurts forcefully and his words are like the crash of a wave against the back of your knees when you’re turned away, facing the shore, unsuspecting.

Riku blinks.

“No,” Riku says, feeling himself frown, this time in confusion. “No, you-“

“ _Riku_ ,” Sora growls, or tries to. He shakes Riku using his grip on the fabric of Riku’s tank top, knuckles brushing Riku’s ribs as he moves, and the feeling knocks the wind out of Riku’s sails before it can even gather there. He’s reeling, a little, his mind blank.

“I love you,” Sora repeats, stubbornly. He says it like it’s a challenge, the declaration a thing that feels like a wooden sword smacked right into Riku’s chest. Riku blinks again and wheezes when he tries to speak. He doesn’t know what to say, or do, or think.

 _This isn’t happening_. _This is another fucking daydream. Maybe I fell in the water and drowned. This_ isn’t _happening_.

“Riku, I love you,” Sora repeats, this time gently. He presses forward, his grip of the shirt falling, so that their chests are scant inches apart, his hand curling, carefully and shyly, around the jut of Riku’s hip.

“Um,” Riku says. It comes out thickly, like wet sand. It grits his between his teeth, these words. “Are you sure?”

Sora rolls his eyes, expansively so, and in one more little step presses their bodies flush together. He reaches up and cups Riku’s cheeks once more and this time Riku lets him. He feels the tug and bends accordingly, still half convinced this is a dream, or a nightmare, or the vivid last minute hallucination of a dying man. Sora looks up at him, blue irises like the depths of the sea, glittering and gorgeous, and Riku feels a tug on his heart when Sora sighs and the breath tickles at his own lips.

“I love you,” Riku says then, because Sora is so close, and so bright, and warm, and gentle where his fingertips cradle Riku’s jaw. The words fall from his lips and land, not on the sand between their feet, but instead on Sora’s lips instead. He can almost feel the imprint of those words on chapped lips as he dips his head and they brush, chastely, together.

Sora smiles and it’s even more beautiful to almost-feel than it is to see. Riku thinks it would be even more beautiful to feel in full, but the last of his fears keep him from closing the last hair-breath distance between them.

“ _Riku_ ,” Sora mutters, his nose bumping Riku’s as he rises on his tiptoes. Like a reflex Riku leans back, just a little, enough to keep their lips from doing more than brush, and he feels heat flood his cheeks as he realizes he has done such a thing. Sora only laughs a little, softly, eyes still glimmering.

“Kiss me,” the shorter boy says quietly. Riku makes a small noise in his throat, hesitating for only a second longer, and then leans down to do just that.

He’s right, he finds out; Sora’s smile is even more beautiful when he’s pressing it against Riku’s lips, sharing it between them until Riku is smiling too.

**Author's Note:**

> the Baeb and I are running through KH and yesterday we decided to officially adopt Riku as our gay disaster child and that deserves a celebration wherein Riku is Loved and Told So Very Much. and also Kissed. 
> 
> all hail my garbage roots and also Riku's poor gay bad decision making self. so glad they live happily ever after and that KH3 came out years ago like promised, haha, hallelujah amen.


End file.
